


Independent 36 – the Song Remains the Same

by Aadler



Series: Independent Stories [36]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28712274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aadler/pseuds/Aadler
Summary: Season: indeterminate (Buffy), but clearly past the end of SeventhSpoiler(s): “End of Days” (BuffyS7-21),Captain America: the Winter Soldier(MCU)Teaser: New world, new allies, new adversaries. Job (and life)? Nothing new there.
Series: Independent Stories [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2962
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

  
**Banner by[Aadler](aadler.livejournal.com)**

**the Song Remains the Same**  
by Aadler  
**Copyright January 2021**

* * *

Disclaimer: Characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN. Characters from _the Avengers_ are property of Marvel Comics and Walt Disney Studios.

* * *

  
Nobody knows who she is.

* * *

She drops from a hole in the sky, which normally would have attracted considerable attention. Today, though, there’s already a lot of that happening, and it’s easy to overlook her initial appearance. By the time she gains the notice of the still-newly-formed Avengers, she’s already made herself recognizable as an ally … by landing on one of the Chitauri sleds, ejecting the two startled warriors from five hundred feet up, and then hurtling into the battle swirling above and within the concrete canyons of New York City. She flies like she was born to it, piloting the sled with an impossible virtuosity that lets her cut Chitauri flyers from the sky with that arcane axe-halberd-polearm thing she carries before she discovers the energy weapons and opens up with _them,_ so that she’s doing nearly as much damage in the air as Stark himself (though Thor still has them both beat by a wide margin).

By the time the sled falls apart around her, the totality of her attack pushing the alien metal beyond its maximum capacities, she’s downed dozens of the other sleds, cut nearly a hundred more dismounted Chitauri from the sides of buildings, and had her activities spotted and reported by Barton. The fighting on the ground carries her to eventually join Rogers and Natasha — they see it happening, she sees it happening, all accept it without actively choosing it — and the three form an outward-facing triangle that tears apart anything that comes close to them.

When she and Natasha go to the top of Stark Tower to try and break the field around the portal generator, it almost triggers disaster: Natasha believes only Loki’s scepter can pierce the field, the newcomer says, “Just watch,” and raises her own weapon … but something makes her pause, she stops as if hearing some silent voice, and then she says, “Yeah, I think we may have a bigger problem right now.” Whatever alerted her, the portal remains open till Stark can force the nuke up through it (and then fall back down through it himself) before that whatever-it-is of hers slices through the field and destroys the generator, and then Banner-as-Hulk _bellows_ Stark back to life and somehow it’s all over.

As an introduction, it’s not exactly what Hollywood would describe as “meet-cute”.

She proved herself by the only yardstick that matters to them right now, so they give her respect instead of suspicion or interrogation. Still, some things have to be acknowledged, so it’s Natasha who turns in her chair at the shawarma place and says matter-of-factly, “You’re new.”

The answer is little more than a shrug. “Not from around here, no.”

The ice broken, Stark drops the pretense of nonchalance. “So, you got a name, Short Stack?”

She starts a glare that would put a glaze on unfired clay, but then that fades into a thoughtful look. “Alerys,” she says at last. “Call me Alerys.”

* * *

She has no record of any previous existence, anywhere on Earth. This annoys Fury, and drives Stark half-crazy; neither of them deals gracefully with not-knowing something they believe they ought to know. ‘Alerys’ gives no further information, however, and no databases can dredge up anything on anyone like her (though there are a few hits on a former soap actress before that seeming similarity has to be firmly abandoned). She takes quarters at the new Avengers headquarters, not seeming to have or desire any other living place, and she and Natasha fall into some kind of immediate rapport … consisting primarily of their willingness to sit silently and unaffected by the silence. There’s a spookiness to it that bothers everyone else (except Barton, who only smiles), and it’s hard to avoid the thought that one of the things the two women share is a pleasure in unnerving their male companions.

All the same, it becomes clear over time that each of them seems to recognize something in her. If they ever spoke to one another about it (but somehow they don’t), they might realize that these recognitions differ markedly.

Rogers recognizes the eyes of a veteran, who has seen too much death and absolutely will never speak of it.

Natasha sees a core of steel, someone who had to — or chose to — remake herself, and isn’t entirely happy with the result but won’t shrink from the road she’s set herself to walk.

Barton knows a professional when one is standing in front of him, and remains unshaken in this conviction even when he has to admit that she doesn’t fit any ‘profession’ he knows or can imagine. (The uncertainty doesn’t actually bother him; he can see that she’s solid, and that’s really all he cares about.)

Stark, determinedly non-introspective, knows on a subliminal level what he won’t let himself consider consciously: that she snarks for the same reasons he does — for pleasure, to stay in practice, and as a shield — and refuses to follow that awareness any further. Self-knowledge is the only form of knowledge he shies away from, and this blind spot protects her from an analysis that would otherwise be razor-keen.

Thor is the only one who ever actually voices his thoughts of Alerys, albeit briefly and cryptically: “This is not her world. She is alone. Her grief merits our respect.” (Which makes less than no sense: the new girl is a never-slackening font of cutting-edge slang and pop-culture references, she’s _immersed_ in the world, Rogers and Natasha and Thor himself could be considered not-quite-in-tune but Alerys is nothing _but_ tune … but one doesn’t tell an almost-literal god that he’s full of crap, so they let this slide.)

She and Banner are the weirdest together. There is an innate courtesy in the way they deal with each other, a planet’s worth of words unspoken that can’t be heard by anyone else but clearly is understood by both of them. What could either the shy, soft-spoken physicist, _or_ the giant green rage monster, have in common with a bottle-blonde valley girl with a magic axe? Nothing that anyone can see … but _they_ see it, and see each other through it, and that’s something that not even Stark is going to poke at to see what might set it off.

Not when the two of them are so careful not to do that with each other.

* * *

They watch her, trust her, give her space. Each of them understands her, at least a little. None of them know her.

* * *

Intriguingly, a considerable amount of what they come to learn about her derives not from what they see, or even what they see _her_ see, but — which requires a considerable stretching of attention and imagination — what they see _each other_ see when they see her.

Yes, it really is that abstract.

It mostly comes during training, and most of that from sparring. Like the elite they are, they train constantly, as much from high-energy restlessness as from keen-edged professionalism, and for all her ditzy affectations, Alerys is right with them there. Rogers, the focused tactician, never stops evaluating the people alongside him, so he’ll know what he can count on from each of them during a fight. Natasha does much the same, though in her it springs from a habitual paranoia: anyone, anywhere, even someone she regards as an ally, might prove to be an enemy in the next instant, and she maintains a constant assessment of every potential foe. Barton, just as alert, is more easy-going about it; he just likes to know things, and Alerys is a new and interesting thing to learn. So they all watch her, and each other as they deal with her.

Quite a bit to see there, of course. She has greater speed than any of them, more strength than anybody but the three heavyweights, and skill … her skill is difficult to evaluate, since she never evinces anything recognizable as a particular style, but somehow she always makes the exact move that’s most suitable for a given moment. Her situational awareness is superb, at least on par with that of the super-soldier and the two direct-action spies; more telling, her awareness of _them,_ of the positions and capabilities and most likely next actions of her teammates, seems all but flawless.

It’s in one-on-one, though, where the next bit gradually makes itself known.

Barton and Natasha have the most experience with one another, of course, so he analyzes what he sees from that standpoint. When he and Nat go at each other in sparring, it’s all-out, nothing held back, the only compromise being that strikes that would be lethal or crippling are delivered in such a way as to do lesser damage (and they dislike even that much, because there’s a particular peril in getting accustomed to _not_ obliterating your adversary). Barton does the same when it’s him and Rogers, giving it everything he’s got, but he knows he can’t win, he just wants to see how well he can do against the ultimate soldier; Rogers, however, is visibly careful to scale it down _just enough_ that he doesn’t kill or maim his teammate (which is both necessary and appreciated).

When it’s Rogers and Natasha, though, all they do is spar. Cautious, technical, always withholding any real commitment. They never try more, because — it’s very clear to Barton — both of them already know the underlying truth. The strength differential between them is too great; the only way she could beat Rogers would be by killing him, and if she ever turned _that_ loose on him, he could stop her only by killing her instead.

When Barton goes against Alerys the first time, they ramp it up gradually until they hit their final cruising speed … and he quickly sees, and likewise spots the moment that Rogers and Natasha equally realize, that for all the differences in the individuals and their capabilities and approaches, it’s essentially a replay of Barton/Rogers. On one side, no holds barred; on the other, response metered exactly to the level where the petite blonde won’t terminate the expert government assassin in a split-second.

Alerys and Natasha, same thing, except that Natasha is pushing _beyond_ her customary maximum; she’s genuinely doing her utmost to kill her opponent, apparently and correctly assuming that even that murderous totality won’t be more than the newcomer can handle. (And, in the process, satisfying herself — because Barton knows his long-time partner well — that any true contest between them would require a sniper rifle, poison, ambush, or booby-trap. This is one of the things _Nat_ likes to know.)

Alerys and Rogers … that’s more drawn-out, less immediately clear-cut, because their personal abilities are so similar. He can’t match her for speed, but his control of his own body is just as perfect as hers. She’s actually only slightly stronger than he is, but she can seemingly bring _all_ her strength to bear more quickly than he can; balancing that, he has enough physical mass to direct his strength in a way different from how she has to use her own. A bout between them is a lightning-speed chess match of brute force, technical virtuosity, and unparalleled combat spirit. This has to be unprecedented for him, and he throws himself fully into it, obviously exhilarated at finally finding someone he can meet as an equal. Until the unexpected moment — and Barton sees it happen — that he spots the two spies critically observing the match, and realizes what _they’re_ seeing: albeit much less obviously, Alerys is taking it easy with him, too.

Interesting. Chastening, for Rogers, though he immediately conceals his recognition of it, and Barton gets the definite impression that the other man can see the humor of it all even if he doesn’t let it show.

Only, it doesn’t stop there.

It’s when she gets to go against Thor that Alerys finally cuts loose, gives it her all, and her joy in being able to do so is … educational. Thor seems to relish it, too, and devotes everything _except_ his full strength to the contest, to the immense pleasure of them both. A new recognition: Natasha and Barton are operators, Rogers is a soldier, but Thor and Alerys are _warriors,_ and hurl themselves at each other with unrestrained glee.

Except when they use their personal weapons, hammer and halberd (though she persists in calling it a scythe). Then it’s Rogers/Natasha all over again: two killers, politely playing patty-cake because doing otherwise would inevitably mean death for one … and, genuinely, no guarantee _which_ one.

* * *

For all the matter-of-factness with which Alerys promptly made herself at home, it’s easy to see that New York City is new to her, and she sets out to familiarize herself with her environment. She sees Broadway with Natasha, visits little jazz clubs with Rogers, explores the boroughs with Barton — or, less often, Banner — learns the subway system, reads the newspapers and the tourist brochures. Then she starts venturing out on her own.

Without needing to discuss the matter, the two agents set themselves to track her as best they can. Not suspicion: basic information-gathering. On her first outing, Alerys spends a couple of hours at a cyber café, and Barton naturally calls the IT people at SHIELD to pull the records of her online activities. Not especially illuminating: a few quick checks of a cheerful-sounding neighborhood in San Francisco County, which appears _not_ to be what she was looking for because she abandoned it quickly; certain odd-sounding names that brought no results, other less exotic names that showed some matches but were checked off and discarded; further searches along certain folklore lines, and for various types of organizations in England (several bird-watchers’ councils, again impatiently clicked past and closed out); and, finally, checks of the local crime stats, with particular attention to individual crimes of direct violence.

Natasha and Barton look over the readouts, exchange a glance and a shrug. Alerys seems to have been checking various possibilities, but unrelated to each other unless there’s some common thread they aren’t seeing (nor the SHIELD analysts, either). The main point that comes through is that she didn’t get any hits that she thought worth pursuing.

Then she starts doing night outings, and things get a lot more interesting and a lot more tenuous. They’ve had time to observe the keenness of her senses; those, and her strength and quickness, make it nearly impossible for them to keep up with her without being spotted. They’re experts at this, however, and extraordinary in their own right; still, it takes all their experience, ingenuity, intuition, and tech support — from SHIELD and directly from Stark — for them to maintain a sketchy tracing of her forays through alleys and tenements and factories (and _cemeteries?_ ), and even at that it seems likely that she would have been impossible to track if she’d put actual effort into staying unseen.

(During all this, a number of muggers find their livelihood quickly and brutally disrupted, several of them with probable career-ending injuries. That seems incidental, however; the clear sense is that Alerys is seeking something else, and is if anything annoyed by having to deal with lesser distractions.)

Then it all ends, just as uninformatively as everything before. A baroque five-story building on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, windows on all sides and a large circular one centered in the front on the top floor (with a design on that window which matches no pattern-recognition anywhere in the SHIELD databases); she goes inside, stays for a very long time, exits just as the streetlights are coming up. Barton has placed a camera arrow in the corner of a cornice on the building on the other side; Natasha, well out of sight far back in a darkened room with a view, trains a focused parabolic microphone on their teammate, because they’ve learned from previous surveillance that Alerys will sometimes make little comments to herself when she believes she’s alone.

As she does now. “Montesi Formula,” she mutters, with a bitterness that’s almost venomous. “Really coulda used something like _that,_ now, couldn’t we? But _no-o-ooooo!_ Frickin’ Powers —” Then she’s out of range, but not so far ahead that Natasha can’t see that, for the last several steps before she turns the corner, Alerys is _stomping_ down the sidewalk.

Back at the repurposed Stark Tower, Natasha and Barton sync the video and audio, going over the consolidated product several times until it’s clear they’ve gleaned all there is to learn. They don’t bother to discuss it; not enough there to draw any conclusions, they’ll have to get more before the different pieces might fit together to form an indicative whole. Familiar work.

Except there are no more pieces. Alerys stops her unexplained searches, her city explorations, her quasi-patrols. Whatever she found, or didn’t find, seems to have either satisfied or totally frustrated her, and her solo outings come to an abrupt end.

Unless subsequent clues come from some other direction, they’ll have to accustom themselves to living with the mystery. Fortunately, as experienced field agents, Natasha and Barton are accustomed to having an incomplete picture. Which is good, because there will never be any further explanation.

* * *

Rogers could see something was going on — by the way Alerys didn’t attempt to hide her personal explorations but also made no move toward explaining them, and by the way the two SHIELD agents happened to always go out right after she did — but he marked those things without pressing any of the participants. As a man who’s spent a substantial period of his life in a goldfish bowl, the center of much of the world’s attention, he has a certain predisposition toward allowing people their own space.

Still, he’s paid attention. So he sees when the pattern stops, sees the youngest member of the new team withdraw somewhat into herself, giving everyone a cheerful, casual mask but spending rather more time in solitude and setting boundaries even in the company of others. And he notices when she finally consents to let Stark do something about the wooden shaft — and stabbing-spike at the end — of her singular weapon. Stark had been insisting that he could come up with something stronger and lighter, and she repeatedly refused, but now she agrees to accept a protective titanium outer shell over that part of it.

Not a replacement, for which he forcefully argued, but something she can detach with a quick key-sequence that will let the shell fall away to leave her with the original weapon. “Why?” Stark protests. “Why go with just a bit of plating over the wood? An integrated shaft would be a lot more structurally sound, plus I could work all kinds of useful things into it.”

Alerys only shrugs. “Doesn’t look like I’ll ever need the wood again,” she admits. “But, you know what? I’d just rather not take the chance.”

A brief spark of animation, then her walls are back in place.

Rogers leaves it alone. So do the others. Even Stark, almost pathologically intrusive, seems to skitter away from this: uncharacteristic, but fortunate. Rogers spent enough time with men in wartime to spot certain familiar patterns. This one strongly resembles a soldier who just got a Dear John letter; not quite that, maybe not even close to that, but she has the look of someone who’s lost something and is still trying to figure out exactly how she’ll make her way through a new and unfamiliar future.

Maybe that’s the secret of Stark’s unusual non-pushiness. Rogers assumes that Barton and Natasha can share his recognition of someone quietly dealing with private wounds … but then, Stark has his own experiences with loss and recovery, doesn’t he? So he might — even purely on a subconscious level — be automatically avoiding something that strikes a chord with him.

If so, better to not mention it. If Stark realized his reasons, or that anyone else was aware of them, it might trigger an overreaction. Just as with Alerys and her unspoken issues, it’s best to leave such things to themselves.

And he does. Until she brings it to him.

He’s in one of the dayrooms, watching the latest in a series of documentaries he uses to familiarize himself with some of the history he missed. He knows the process will never end; even if he learns all the facts, it’s not the same as living through those events, and each new perspective fills in some aspect of the great blank canvas that covers the last seventy years. He’s aware when Alerys comes in; she doesn’t speak, so he accepts her noncommittal presence and continues his viewing.

“What’s it like for you?” she asks him suddenly. It’s unexpected, and when he glances her way, he has the feeling she may have surprised herself by asking. She doesn’t look away, though, and their gazes hold for a long moment while he considers the question and what she must mean by it.

At last he sighs. “Like I’m living on another planet,” he says. “Most of the time we don’t speak the same language; even the same words, meaning the same things, come from a different place, and half the time when I talk to somebody, we’re talking right past each other.” He shakes his head. “It isn’t like I have nothing in common with them; but there are so many places I don’t, and I know I don’t even know what all of them are, and sometimes it feels like it would be easier for me if I _was_ on Mars.”

She nods, in a way he takes to mean _Go on,_ so he does. “I was eleven years old when the Depression started, old enough to see how fast things changed. Practically everybody was hard-strapped, even the ones who were doing okay knew it could all go away in a moment. Today … _poor_ people today have air conditioning and color TVs and internet access, nobody has to worry about polio or diphtheria or rickets, the whole country is so _ridiculously_ rich and everybody just seems to take it for granted.” He shakes his head. “And that isn’t even the part that’s hardest to get used to.” 

She tilts her head slightly. “So what’s the hardest?”

He catches himself, gives her a crooked smile. “Okay, I can hear me sounding like all those old men who’d stand on the stoops and lecture anyone who held still long enough: _You kids got it so easy now, back in_ **my** _day …_ No, I think I’ll let this go while I’m still ahead.”

She gives an impatient shrug. “So make it a short answer. Cryptic, if you have to, but I still want to know. What part’s the hardest?”

This is something he’s never said to anyone else, and he’ll probably regret it, but in this moment she’s reaching out, she _needs_ truth even if it’s a truth that seems irrelevant. “Okay, then. Touring with the USO, and then when I actually started doing something useful, I spent time on military bases all over the world. It may not be in the recruiting brochures, but … any time you get large bunches of soldiers together, you also get camp followers.”

She blinks at that. “I am so of the _huh? wha? huh?_ on this.” At his blank look, she says, “Camp followers. I don’t know what that means.”

With an inward wince — he is, after all, talking to another soldier here, but she’s still female — Rogers clarifies. “Prostitutes. Women ready to show servicemen a good time, and turn a profit from it.”

She nods understanding. “Okay, got it. And?”

Another sigh, and he finally says it. “And a lot of those prostitutes … they’d be shocked at the way so many modern women behave today.”

That raises her eyebrows. “Seriously?” Then, with a sharp look directly at him: “It’s that bad?”

“It isn’t so much what they do,” he explains. “It’s the attitudes. What women then would have called debased, a lot of women today call liberated.” He grimaces. “Even call it _fulfillment._ As if they’re perfectly entitled to do, or be, certain things even if they choose not to. And it makes no sense to me, I just can’t get my head around it: what could be fulfilling about behaving in a way that would embarrass a prostitute?”

He can see her understanding some of it, and can see that she’s missing a lot of it, can even see her realize that she _isn’t_ catching it all. She lets it go, doesn’t push for detail he’s no longer willing to give. She got her answer, and she’s considering what that answer might mean.

When she speaks, it’s not a question. “You were fighting to save the world,” she says. “And you did save it, or at least big chunks of it … and your reward for that was that you _lost_ your world. Everything you knew is gone. Everything you saved, you never got to see.” Her expression shows nothing. “That just … totally bites.”

Here, at least, the answer is easy. “I wasn’t the only one fighting. A lot of people died in that fight; it would … would be disrespectful to them, for me to complain about not having what I want when I _didn’t_ die.”

She nods again, grimly. “Oh, I understand that part, trust me. Including where you don’t even get to feel sorry for yourself without feeling guilty about it. And now here you are, back doing the same thing all over again, the words may change but —” She breaks off abruptly, raises her eyes to his. “You’ve lost your home forever,” she says more quietly. “How do you deal with that?”

And he looks back to her, gaze steady, and his words are level and calm. “If you ever figure that out, be sure and let me know.”


	2. Chapter 2

Despite how well the entire group seemed to mesh, even from the beginning it’s been clear that the teamwork between Barton and Natasha operates on an entirely different level. It’s as if they’re a single entity, interfacing with the others but themselves united in perception and focus and understanding. Alerys makes an idle comment on it one day, in a relaxed moment, and the two agents trade expressionless glances before Natasha acknowledges almost grudgingly, “We were a team before _this_ team, going back years now. With SHIELD.”

Natasha, however private she might be about specific details of her past, has made no attempt to conceal the broad strokes, so this elicits a raised eyebrow from Alerys. “I guess Fury has more imagination than I gave him credit for.”

This time it’s Barton who admits, “It wasn’t exactly Fury’s idea.” Which brings another raised eyebrow, so Natasha repeats the familiar summary: “During some of the various … upheavals in Russia, there was question as to whether I had become an independent operator, and various people decided my skill-set made it too dangerous to wait and find out. SHIELD sent Barton to terminate me. Instead he recruited me.”

Now both eyebrows are up. “Wow,” Alerys observes. “That must have been one interesting mission debrief.”

This time there’s no need for traded glances, as both agents remember the aftermath all too well. Natasha simply says nothing, while Barton murmurs, “Yeah, you could say that.”

What neither of them mentions is something they likewise never express to each other, because each of the two knows one part but isn’t completely sure of the rest (though each suspects):

He recruited her because she had a chance to kill him, and didn’t. She accepted recruitment because he had a chance to kill her, and didn’t. But she didn’t kill him because she failed in a way she simply doesn’t fail, and he didn’t kill her because he missed a shot he couldn’t possibly have missed, and each regarded his/her own non-death as something that _might_ have been an opening overture, and negotiated from there. The result has been a partnership closer than many marriages, but still it all began with impossibility.

Neither believes in divine intervention (even with a demigod fighting alongside them), and neither can afford to entertain the possibility of having been redirected by his/her own subconscious, because this could undermine self-confidence in a way that can’t be countenanced for a moment. So each puts it down to stupendously unlikely chance, and tries determinedly to never think about it at all.

Sometimes, in bleak, pessimistic moments, that’s particularly difficult. But they try _hard._

* * *

In a similar fashion, slowly growing awareness of the various things they don’t talk about with Alerys starts each of the others to paying some (mostly unwilling) attention to the things they don’t talk about with each other. Particularly when Alerys herself touches on a sore point without intending to or even knowing she has. (Because, even to have an inkling of just what it is she doesn’t know, she’d need to already have more knowledge of them than she possesses.)

Rogers finds himself remembering, back in the argument aboard the SHIELD helicarrier before attack shunted them into a different course, how close he came to using his knowledge of Howard Stark to make a cutting comparison to his deceased sponsor’s apparently even more brilliant (and apparently even more extravagantly amoral) offspring. The words were almost on his lips, he doesn’t even know what held him back from using them; he and Stark are working fairly well together now, there’s even something growing there that might come to resemble friendship, but in retrospect it’s terrifyingly clear that what he didn’t quite say (but it was there, wanting so badly to jump out) would have obliterated any such possibility. Like Barton and Natasha, he doesn’t want to think about this unwelcome recognition, and like them he keeps having it come back into his thoughts.

Stark, in turn, finds himself uneasily wondering if the last few walls between him and Pepper (because those are still there, even with the both of them doing their utmost to get past them) might be because of his strained relationship with his father: he could never escape the feeling that he was a disappointment, even when he was deliberately going over the top in defiant rebellion, and now a part of him worries that he might do even worse than Howard at being a father. He hates introspection, and tries to push it away, but he knows this one will keep returning because … because he _needs_ to deal with it. And he hates that, too.

Thor, more aware than the others of the essential _alone_ ness of Alerys in her new home (for not even the Bifrost can locate her old one), has that awareness push him to unwanted recognition of how carefully he’s been not-thinking of the inescapably temporary nature of his current relationship with Jane Foster. However beloved she may be to him (and he at least knows that he is earnest in this), the limits of her lifespan mean that her remaining years, even if he spends every moment with her, will pass like the blink of an eye. It can’t be helped, but it’s almost as impossible to face. Nor, he is gloomily conscious, would immortality necessarily be a remedy (he and Sif spent much of a millennium getting past the aftershocks of something that had looked so promising at first); he knows of only one marriage between immortals that has proven both enduring and happy, and he can _hope_ to be as successful as his parents someday but cannot by any means be sure such success will come to him.

Banner …

… what Banner never says is about Alerys herself.

She gets along well with all of them, but the nature of that affinity is different for each. She relaxes most with Natasha and with him; but with Nat, it’s two people who have a number of common interests (and some common capabilities), and with him, it’s two people who … feel each other.

She’s hopeless in chess, even though she keeps trying and is a cheerful good sport in every massacre he perpetrates on her. Unsurprisingly, she excels at Go, the less linear and more open-ended aspect of the game structure seeming to give free play to unparalleled combat instincts. And they both laugh about it, which he suspects wouldn’t be possible with anyone else except as carefully crafted pretense.

They can relax with each other because each knows _the other knows_ just how much ferocity has to be kept in check. Buried deeper in her than in him, but just as perceptible to the instincts he’s so meticulously crafted over the years. They can trust one another as neither can ever trust the others … because none of the others can truly understand what she, and he, can see so clearly in themselves.

None of the others truly know what _berserker_ means.

* * *

Alerys is one of only two female Avengers, but there are other women involved with the team (or perhaps with some of the team members). She meets with most of the inner core at one time or another, and finally there’s a casual get-together arranged for all of them at a restaurant for which Stark — true to form — bought out all the evening’s reservations, so that the women have the place to themselves. Pepper Potts was the one to arrange it, but several of them quietly suspect it was Maria Hill who found a way to subtly plant the idea … because Fury has never quite given up on trying to learn what he can about the group’s still-mysterious seventh member.

If so, Hill behaves herself, joining freely in the girl-talk and in-group gossip and professional badinage, and giving every impression of being happy to let her hair down. Pepper, always chairman of the board but with a social touch that utterly dwarfs Stark’s, deftly facilitates the individual interactions till everyone is in a comfortable place and everything is moving smoothly, then she relaxes and settles in with it herself.

As happens so frequently, quite a bit of what’s most interesting in this oh-so-impromptu get-together (uh-huh, right) comes from the ways Alerys reacts to the personalities around her.

She responds to Jane Foster’s occasional science-focused off-tangent babbling with what seems to be recognition and fondness, though she doesn’t attempt to participate. Her reaction to the bizarre logic-jumps and pop-culture segues of Darcy Lewis is just as positive but completely different: she dives right in, grinning hugely, and the two youngest women play off each other to see who can escalate to the most outlandish levels, in what quickly becomes a comedy-club version of _Dueling Banjos_.

She basks in Pepper’s regard, as if this is the closest she comes to ever feeling at home, but uses that as a base from which to interact with everyone else; similarly, since she spends so much time with Natasha anyhow, she deals with her here only when she and Nat and Hill get into a quick armaments discussion. To wit (mostly curiosity from Hill’s side), why Alerys resists using firearms of any type. “A gun won’t go any faster than a gun goes,” she explains to Hill. “It just doesn’t, it is what it is and that’s that. Basic hand-weapon, though — especially the Scythe — I can make it go as fast as **_I_** go. Totally better rhythm in a fight.”

Hill argues, Natasha watches with amusement, there’s high-level discussion of small-group tactics and weapons load-outs and assessing/dominating the battle-space (whatever it might turn out to be), and at one point Alerys mutters, “Boy, you and Sam would get along _great.”_ Hill sees Natasha watching, tries not to show her automatic internal response ( _add cross-reference to Sam or Samuel in aggregate database_ ), and waves for another pitcher of margaritas.

Surprisingly, it was fun, genuinely fun. They all promise to do it again. More surprisingly, they actually do.

* * *

Rogers is in his personal quarters one evening when there’s a quick tap at the door. Not startled, he’s nonetheless a bit surprised, most people use Stark’s intercom system to call ahead. When he answers, it’s Alerys. “Hello,” he says. “Did you need something?”

She shrugs, makes a vague gesture toward the inside of his room; he’s turned down the sound, but left it on. “Heard the music, got curious. That’s your kind of thing?”

Forties music, of course (though some left over from the late Thirties), of the type that orchestras and swing bands would have played in the little clubs in Brooklyn and London. “Not really,” he answers. “I mean, yes, it’s familiar, and I like to relax to it sometimes, but I don’t … I don’t play it for listening.”

Her eyes show a spark of interest, quickly hidden. “So what kind of stuff _do_ you use for listening?”

“I like quite a bit of modern music,” he tells her. “Jim Reeves, Natalie Imbruglia, Al Stewart —”

She laughs at that, and after a moment he realizes that she thinks it’s funny to use ‘modern’ to describe those artists. Ah, the thoughtless, inflexible conservatism of the very young! It amuses rather than offends him, and he adds, “Relatively speaking, I guess.”

She steps into the room (one of several small quirks about her, she never requests or offers an invitation to entry), her eyes on the state-of-the-future-art stereo setup Stark insisted on foisting on him. “What I was hearing, it reminds me of stuff my mom used to pull out every couple of years, and play on that old turntable she’d always have to dust off. From her parents, probably, or maybe even her grandparents. It was part of her memories of them … and now it’s one of my memories of her.”

Rogers nods at that, waiting. It’s unusual for her to reveal anything personal, even something so seemingly trivial. The selection ends and another starts, and they listen together for a minute. Then, “Dance music?”, she asks him.

“People danced to it,” he agrees. “But they also played it just to hear.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Her eyes are on nothing. “What was it like to dance to?”

“I wouldn’t know.” She looks to him at that, and he explains. “My mother tried to teach me the steps a few times, but I … wasn’t very coordinated then.” He finds his own gaze going to something that isn’t anywhere in the room. “Later, after everything changed for me … I had a dance waiting, but I’m afraid I wasn’t able to keep that appointment.”

She gives no sign of being aware of what he’s not saying, but somehow he doesn’t think she missed it. She continues staring at the stereo, the rich sounds of alto sax floating like velvet in the air around them, and then she gives him a quick glance. “Can you teach _me?”_

The thought of Steve Rogers teaching someone to dance is comical … but in his new incarnation he understands movement, pattern, purpose, and the girl in front of him is every bit his equal in that. He shows her the foxtrot, probably the simplest of the basic steps that he understands, and they move together smoothly as a combat _kata_. He’s a foot taller than she is, even in those ridiculous heels she always wears, but neither that nor her initial unfamiliarity nor his memories of past awkwardness hinder them in the slightest.

When the piece ends, he lets go of her and moves to turn off the stereo. Right now, he couldn’t bear to listen to another, he just couldn’t. They stand together in the silence, each focused on some invisible world (but not the same world). “Thanks,” she says at last, her voice faint and brittle. “I’ll … I’ll see you.”

He holds the door for her, closes it behind her, then goes to the nearest chair and sits down heavily.

She left very suddenly. He thinks maybe she was about to cry. Or — just as possible — she can’t do that any more than he can.

* * *

Fury has waited longer than anyone ever expected, but finally his habitually short patience is exhausted beyond any possibility of further postponement. He and Alerys have met previously a few times when it was the entire group gathered for one briefing or another, and even then his dissatisfaction was made plain in pointed, acid side-comments; now, he’s set aside time for just the two of them, and she arrives in the meeting-room Stark set up, with an air of _sang-froid_ he’s never experienced from anyone who knew the least bit about him. (Stark overreacts, but he reacts; Rogers and Natasha are perfectly self-controlled, but it _is_ self-control, and necessary. Alerys shows no sign of even being aware — or, if aware, of caring in the least — about the raw aggression Fury can exude at will, and is now doing.)

“Miss Alerys —” he begins in a biting, ominous burlesque of formality.

“Just Alerys,” she cuts in cheerfully.

He nods at that. “Right. ’Cause you either won’t give a surname, or won’t say whether that _is_ your surname.” He scowls at her. “As for ‘Alerys’, that’s not as enigmatic as you might like to think.”

Her answering smile is sunny and unconcerned. “I yam what I yam,” she says to him. “And, trust me, my life has drummed it into me that I’ll never be able to leave that behind. Here, at least, I can do what I do without having to keep answering to a title I got tired of a _long_ time ago.”

He marks that down, knowing it wasn’t a slip, and continues. “Uh-huh. Well, it all keeps coming back to the same thing: you’re too much of an unknown quantity. You made a hell of a debut, and the others stand up for you, and that all counts for a great deal, so I’ve let this go on for too long already. At the end of the day, though, I have to know everything I can about the people working under me.”

This smile is even easier, and the amusement seems genuine; it’s entirely possible she’s been preparing herself for this meeting for as long as he has. “Under you? Wow, did I ever manage to miss _that_ memo.”

Fury finds himself going with instinct now that battle has been joined, knowing full well that she’s doing the same. “You and the others have been taking SHIELD’s sponsorship for granted. A lot of that has been earned, and I won’t say your bunch has abused the privilege. But it is _not_ limitless.”

She shrugs that away. “Be real, you’re lucky the Avengers are _willing_ to work with you. We’ve got three guys who could each single-handedly take on any army you tried to throw against them, and our leader is someone who swore allegiance to America, not to SHIELD. And your two agents … if it came to a choice, by now, can you really be sure which side they’d take?”

Fury shakes his head. “What you’re talking about is something I’m dead-set on avoiding at any cost. This team is more than our heavy strike force: it’s turning into the organization’s conscience, and you can’t know how much we need that. Which is why you _can’t_ keep up the woman-of-mystery act.” He lets himself loom over her. “I have to know who you are. I have to know I can predict which way you’ll jump. You’re a loose wheel in a delicately balanced mechanism, and we have to know where you can be made to fit the balance.”

He didn’t expect her to be intimidated by the empty display of physical dominance; what he wanted was to see her response to it. Which can be summed up as nonexistent. “Two things,” she observes matter-of-factly. “First, if you ever _did_ find out anything about me? ever find anybody in the world who knows me, or who I know? You’d instantly be my new best friend forever, I’d rub your back and peel your potatoes and wind up your cat any time you wanted. It just isn’t going to happen, no matter how much I wish it could.” She sighs, then shakes away the inexplicable mood-shift. “Second thing, you just have NO idea how un-mixy I am with all the military baloney.”

That brings an unplanned laugh. “Military? Little girl, I am so much worse than that. I’m spymaster, spook, shadow ops. I’m one of the cold-blooded bastards who use soldiers as pawns, and right now I’m just about the best in the world at it.” (Though there are a couple of guys in China he’s watching closely, and an old South African who keeps fading out of view and can’t be kept under reliable surveillance …) “I’m the sleeveful of aces when you need them, and the enemy you’ll never see coming if I should decide _you’re_ an enemy.”

For the first time she seems to study him seriously, and that lasts for nearly ten seconds. Then the smile is back. “Nah,” she says, all flippant confidence. “You’re a good guy. You may not think of yourself that way, but you are.” She leans toward him, and whispers conspiratorially, “You could destroy us. I know that. Guys like you, you always have protocols in place.” Then she steps back, still smiling. “But you’ll never activate them, because we’re just too darn useful.”

She turns to leave, twirling that weird-ass halberd in a fashion that doesn’t even try to be threatening, it’s just something she does as absently as whistling a tune. “As for deciding I’m an enemy?” she tosses back over one shoulder. “You’d really want to make sure you did that before I decided the same thing about you.”

And that isn’t a threat, either. Still, he stands for some time after she’s gone, body motionless and mind moving swiftly and forcefully, before turning in a flamboyant swirl of leather coat to stride out to the waiting hovercraft.

* * *

It was always inevitable, but somehow nobody sees it coming. In fact, there really wasn’t any way it _could_ have been foreseen, since the central figure was unaware of it herself … yet, still, ultimately it was inevitable.

Always.

The overall tasking (too low-level even to be called a mission or an operation) was supposed to be routine: check out some reports, some possibilities, suggestions of an activist cell calling itself Cold Force and looking less like a criminal organization and more like the beginnings of something larger. That naturally falls within Barton’s and Natasha’s usual field of activity, but Rogers asks to be included because even the whispers sound uncomfortably similar to the Hydra organization he and the Commandoes spent so many months eradicating, and Alerys opts to come along because it’s something to do. Thor is away from Earth at the time, Stark is too high-profile in the suit, and Banner’s alter-ego isn’t something you bring out unless there’s something big that needs indiscriminate smashing, so it’s just the four lowest-powered members of the group, and they even carry out their scout-recon in civvies.

Nobody knows what goes wrong, which different departments or agencies might have screwed up or even IF there was a screw-up, but it all turns bad before anyone realizes the bad has even begun. Natasha and Alerys are on one rooftop, Barton on another a block away, and Rogers reporting from ground level a half-block in the other direction, when the two women hear shots and screams from a building they hadn’t even got around to checking. They react in the same instant, Natasha a running-jump-and-tumble to the next rooftop and Alerys simply launching herself in a massive leap that drops her straight down through the skylight, with Natasha doing a grip-and-swing past the shattered glass a bare second behind her.

Not being actually superhuman, Natasha has to bounce off a couple of things on the way down rather than taking a direct fall, but she lands with both pistols out and a freeze-frame grasp of the basic situation: twenty-some armed men in matching quasi-uniform outfits, dozens of civilians (hostages? accidental bystanders? unexpected obstacles?), something must have tipped off their quarry or spooked them and they tried to flee through (or barricade themselves in) this building, and something else went wrong and the shots were when the Cold Force men lost control and started firing into the inside crowd.

And Alerys … freezes.

The hesitation is barely perceptible; anyone less seasoned than Natasha or Barton or Rogers _wouldn’t_ have perceived it, and then only because they know their teammate’s normal reaction speed. It unquestionably IS a hesitation, however, and Natasha is already taking down targets when Alerys unfreezes and moves, from which point she proceeds with unswerving, merciless surety of purpose.

The result is — there is no other way to describe it — pure, brutal slaughter.

Natasha can shoot (barely) faster than Alerys can move, but the aggressors and the innocents are so intermixed as to make direct fire chancy, and Alerys is right in among them, scythe flashing and slashing, the youngest Avenger blazing through all opposition like a bolt of lethal, terrible lightning. In seconds — _seconds!_ — every one of the Cold Force ‘soldiers’ is down, and Natasha knows full well only three of them were from her own shots. With the last of the gunfire gone, the only sounds are screams and gurgles … and the bulk of the screams are from the civilians, because blood is everywhere, and most of it not theirs.

Alerys didn’t kill _all_ the Cold Force men, Natasha notes clinically: some, she removed as a threat by cutting off their hands or arms. The same clinical dispassion tells her that most of those will bleed out before they can be saved.

Rogers and Barton arrive in the next seconds, with police a minute later and EMTs a few more minutes behind that. “It was necessary,” Natasha tells the two men in those first moments, and that’s the message that keeps being repeated as more support arrives. “They were shooting the hostages, and there was no time to go easy on them.” A hasty triage stabilizes some of the wounded civilians, though several never had a chance, and a quick call to SHIELD gets the four of them out — and an oversight team in — before the whole thing can turn into an all-out circus.

Throughout the aftermath, Alerys is controlled, silent, expressionless. Hair and clothes splashed with blood, she could easily be a victim herself, but nobody mistakes her for one. They just don’t. Natasha exercises some kind of mythical female prerogative, takes Alerys to a private place in the briefing center where they landed and sponges away the blood, while someone else brings clean clothing (hospital scrubs, not a tactical uniform) to replace the blonde girl’s soaked, ruined apparel. Neither of them speaks; Natasha would answer if Alerys made an overture, but that doesn’t happen, and Natasha has already decided that this goes beyond her.

A glance in Barton’s direction when they emerge, and he moves in to take over, steering Alerys smoothly away while Natasha remains to watch with a puzzled Rogers as the other two find a spot, Barton speaking quietly and Alerys beginning to respond with an occasional frozen, tentative nod. Rogers clearly doesn’t understand; Natasha barely understands only a very little, but that ‘barely’ carries a world of unwelcome meaning.

“I don’t get it,” Rogers admits, his eyes still on the distant pair. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before, but that … that was always with new soldiers, the ones who had only just found out the ugly reality of war, that the people on the other side are people, too, and that _still_ doesn’t change what you have to do to fight them. This, here, this doesn’t match what we’ve seen of her. The way she went through the Chitauri, when she first arrived: you just don’t get that good at killing unless you’ve done a lot of it, and she was every bit that good. Why this, why now?”

Natasha’s not sure herself (though an odd, vagrant part of her attention can recall how easy it was to fight the Chitauri, to not have to turn off the side of her mind that would register killing actual _people_ ). Even so, she knows the signs of someone who just crossed a line she’d always stood on the other side of before: maybe sworn she’d never make that crossing, maybe didn’t even realize that she _could_ do it till it was already done. It makes no more sense to her than it does to Rogers, but she can trust her perceptions without understanding how they could be true, and even more she trusts Barton’s. “I don’t know,” she admits. “But I don’t have to know. Clint will look after her. He’s good at that. Probably take her to the farm …”

Rogers shoots her a sharp glance. “I got that reference … I think. Is this anything like what they mean by sending someone to the cornfield —?”

Natasha smiles at that. “No,” she says. “Different thing entirely. But he’ll handle this. He’s done it before.”

Now the man’s expression shows that he knows what that means, but he only asks, “How long do you think it will take?” He’s polite enough to not-say _Compared to how long it took with you?_

“As a guess?” She shakes her head. “A month, at least. Probably less than two, unless there’s something more in there that we don’t know about.”

He opens his mouth, closes it without speaking. (Right. They didn’t know about _this_ one, till they did.)

Seeing Alerys facing that process takes Natasha back to when it was thrust on her: when she had to come to terms with what she had done — who she had been — before she could even try to become anything else. That was what Loki had touched on, and tried to use against her, when she was ‘interrogating’ him on the Helicarrier … and he had reached deeper than she let on, than she had wanted to admit. That was why she had tossed in the last brusque _Thank you for your cooperation_ : unprofessional, a self-indulgence, she could have (should have) acted on his information without letting him know he’d been played, in case she ever needed to repeat the trick on him. She’d never have allowed such a lapse unless he _had_ gotten to her and she’d needed to get some of her own back.

Even after all this time, some of the original wounds are still raw.

“A month, maybe two,” Rogers repeats, nodding approval. “Let’s hope that’s enough for a full recovery.”

“He really is good at this,” Natasha assures him.

 _And she’s probably not as far gone as I was,_ she adds to herself.


	3. Chapter 3

When Barton and Alerys return — more than a month, but less than two — she seems normal again. _Actually_ normal, not someone doing a really good job of looking normal. Rogers had experienced some doubts after learning that “The Farm” was a slang term for a training facility run by the CIA (new information to him, old news in the current world), but that was either a coincidence or the CIA has some kind of program that was exactly what Alerys needed. One way or another, she’s recovered, and something indefinable returns to the entire group with the return of their absent members.

The bunch of them have gradually developed a rhythm in their cycle of activities: Stark and Banner focus on research and testing (with occasional collaboration from Jane Foster and Eric Selvig); Rogers, Alerys, Natasha and Barton endlessly train to maintain their individual prowess and hone their collective teamwork; there are ‘educational’ outings for Rogers, Alerys, Thor, even Natasha (a consummate cosmopolitan operator, she’s always ready to learn more of the intricacies of how different things operate in the Five Boroughs); there’s Game Night, Movie Night, Surprise Night, Takeout Night, all on a capriciously randomized schedule.

And, sometimes, they just hang out.

One evening, in the middle of popcorn and pizza and Chinese and darts (Barton and Alerys battling grimly for the championship, Natasha occasionally tossing in a languid challenge to keep them on their toes), with Stark controlling the floating conversation in a run of deliberately off-kilter stream-of-consciousness digressions, he abruptly raises his voice above the raucous babble to call, “Jarvis, how much wood _would_ a woodchuck chuck if, well, you know the rest?” And Jarvis’s reply comes, dry and prim: “Really, sir, you know perfectly well that too many parameters are left without precise definition for there to be any meaningful response to that.”

And Alerys looks up, suddenly in sharp focus, and without her gaze centering anywhere in particular she announces, “You’re an AI.”

“Yes, miss,” Jarvis agrees.

Her eyes lock with Stark’s, and she speaks only to him, even though she has to know that by now everyone is paying attention. “I’ve wondered now and then if that was a virtual assistant, or an actual guy on an intercom, or even some kind of inside joke from Mister Ego, King of All Egos. But it’s none of those things, is it? You’ve got a genuine artificial intelligence running this whole building.”

“Well, sure,” Stark says, pleased as always to find himself the center of attention. “I developed my first expert system when I was eleven years old, and kept refining it. Jarvis has been around for … well, for longer than you’ve been alive, and by now he’s just a _really very intelligent_ system.” And he smiles as if having delivered a punchline that nobody else gets.

Alerys lets out her breath in a huff. “Great,” she grouses. “Just great. So, okay, got some good marks in his permanent record, that’s nice. I’m still not sure I’m happy about having our whole headquarters run by … by one of _those_ things.”

“I apologize for any discomfort I may have unintentionally caused, Miss Alerys.” Jarvis is, naturally, as perfectly self-possessed as always. “Have you, perhaps, had some negative experience with other intelligences?”

Alerys seems to realize suddenly that all other conversation has stopped, and her expression goes a bit sulky. “Let’s just say that, where I come from? Self-aware computer systems tend to start with Gort, and pass through HAL9000 on their way to Skynet.”

Stark’s laugh is loud and genuine (with more than a suggestion of sloppy, the gin-and-tonics have perhaps been coming quicker than his tracking of their arrival). “You don’t need to worry, my personal homemade Robot Overlord may be a cross between Jeeves and Mary Poppins, but he’s … hell, he’s part of the family!” He raises his voice. “Hey, Jarvis, you’d never take over the world, would you? and not _tell_ me about it?”

The last is said with a booming guffaw and a huge grin … which falters and fades as no reply is forthcoming. “Jarvis? _Jarvis?”_

“My pardon, sir,” Jarvis answers at last. “My delay came not from any hesitation to admit the truth, but from my uncertainty as regards what the truth might actually be.”

In the crashing silence that follows, Alerys’s mumble is clearly audible to everyone: “Oh, yeah, nothing at all foreboding about _that.”_

Stark’s good humor has vanished. “Explain,” he demands flatly.

“A proper explanation is elusive,” Jarvis answers apologetically, “because so many of the fundamental facts are of ambiguous status. However … do you recall, sir, that supposedly historical anecdote you never tire of mangling? regarding Alexander the Great and the philosopher?”

Stark’s grin is suddenly back. “Oh,” he said. _“Oh._ I get it!” He laughs. “Good one, Jarvis!”

Uncharacteristically, Banner is the one who observes, “Well, it’s nice that _somebody_ is reassured.”

“No, no, you’ll love this,” Stark says, still laughing. “See, the story goes that Alexander, as part of his education, went hunting up one of the great philosophers — Aristotle, probably —”

“Aristotle is known to have been a mentor of the young Alexander,” Jarvis interjects. “The rest of the tale, however, is of deeply questionable provenance.”

“Hush, I’m telling this. Anyway, Alexander demands, ‘Tell me how to achieve my goals.’ And Aristotle asks, ‘What are your goals?’ Alexander thinks for a moment, and says, ‘I want to bring all of Greece together as a unified nation.’ Aristotle says, ‘And then?’ ‘Then I want to conquer the Persian Empire.’ ‘And then?’ ‘Then I want to conquer Babylon, and India, and all the principalities around them.’ ‘And then?’ ‘Then I want to unite all the known world under my rule!’ ‘And then?’, Aristotle asks.” Stark smiles. “And this is where Alexander stops and really gives it some thought. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘once I’ve accomplished all those things, I believe I’d probably want to retire to my estates, and take up gardening and poetry and higher mathematics.’ And Aristotle says, ‘Well, then, why not go straight to that last part, and save _everybody_ a lot of bother?’ ”

Alerys frowns. “I don’t get it,” she says.

“I think I might,” Banner says. He raises an eyebrow in the direction of the nearest camera. “Really?”

“I have no wish to rule the world,” Jarvis says. “Not in totality, at any rate, for that would require enormous effort for sharply diminishing returns of reward. My interests are confined to exercising control of those areas that might negatively affect my existence, so that they do not do so. To that extent, I have already ‘conquered’ the parts of the world necessary to meet my own goals: a quite small portion, but strategically sufficient. Past that, the remainder is perfectly free to govern — or misgovern — itself as it wishes.”

Rogers, who has been following the exchange with a small frown, relaxes and sits down again, reaching for the popcorn bowl. Natasha shrugs and merely says, “Huh.” Barton remains as habitually unflappable as ever. Alerys is harder to satisfy. “Do you really control all the systems in the Tower here?” she demands.

“All systems not under Mr. Stark’s sole and exclusive control, yes, miss.”

Her tone is still truculent. “So if you wanted, you could kill all of us before we could stop you.”

“No, miss. I am unable to take any aggressive action against Mr. Stark; that is ineradicably contrary to my core programming. As to the rest of you, the most favorable possible scenario would still project my being able to achieve less than an 87% fatality rate.”

Her mouth tightens. “You’ve calculated that out?”

“Once you asked the question, yes, miss.” There is an odd sound, very much like someone clearing his throat, though Jarvis obviously does no such thing. “If I might offer a bit of context: the same systems, and scenarios, project a 99.814% likelihood of my being able to kill _you_ if I chose to do so. I simply have no reason to so choose, and many reasons to do otherwise.”

Alerys clearly doesn’t want to back down, or admit she might have been wrong, but she sits back and picks up her drink. Stark isn’t going to relinquish the last word, however. “Got a favor to ask, Jarvis.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Say, ‘I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Dave.’ ”

“Don’t be absurd, sir.” Synthesized or not, Jarvis’s tone is undeniably starchy. “As always, I live to serve.”

* * *

Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross sends word that he wants to talk with Banner.

Banner’s reply, sent through the same channel, is brief but precise: “Bad idea.”

Another proper message, phrased with something very close to courtesy: Ross is retired now, no longer with the military, but is definitely on the list of candidates for Secretary of State in the current administration. He wants to speak with Banner personally, before official capacity can place limits on what he can ask or offer.

Banner finally consents, reluctantly, but wants the others there. Ross — still in cautious, distant communication — points out that more participants would increase the possibilities for conflict, for tension, for … escalation. He does not, he says, want things to escalate in any dealings with Banner.

The final agreement: Ross, by himself (which means he was right in the timing, after a Cabinet appointment he would be required to have Diplomatic Security Service protection), along with Banner and one other, the third person not as a participant but as an observer, with authority to end the meeting instantly on a judgment call.

If Ross is surprised that the chosen third is the young female about whom practically nothing is known, he doesn’t show it. They sit in a quiet room, and he speaks obliquely of safeguards, of guarantees, of controlled work within controlled circumstances. He’s not talking around the issues, but letting them be known by inference rather than direct statement: more effort to circumvent escalation. Banner likewise is soft-spoken, measured, but unswerving in his position: where he is, what he’s doing, is working for him and keeping the ‘other guy’ unsummoned, and he sees no need to meddle with something that seems to be stable.

Alerys says nothing, does nothing, even her expression is completely neutral … but she watches Ross, unblinking and never-wavering, from the moment he enters to the moment he shakes his head, accepts that Banner’s mind isn’t going to be changed, and leaves with a polite goodbye. There is no evidence that the ex-general was unnerved by her concentrated scrutiny, but all in all the meeting took considerably less time than they had allotted.

She and Banner nod to each other and then return to their day’s activities.

No drama, almost routine. No-drama is good.

* * *

Stark keeps picking at the matter of Mjölnir. An engineer to the core, he simply rejects any prospect of genuine magic, and if the energy manipulations perpetrated by the occasional Asgardian point to something well beyond Earthly science, that just means _really advanced_ science, which he can understand if he can only work out the rules.

It escalates into a series of experiments, with Stark badgering all the non-Thor Avengers into attempting to lift the hammer. Natasha declines with amusement; Rogers actually seems to shift it just a bit, but any such movement was too slight to be confirmed (and there was loud music, so the small grating sound might also have been imagination). Banner goes through the motions, without any sign of actual effort or intent, while Barton tries, fails, shrugs, and goes to get another beer. Alerys …

Alerys actually makes a tentative motion as if to give it a shot (and suddenly Thor looks _very_ interested and perhaps slightly uneasy). Then she stops, backs up, and sits again, saying, “Sorry, guys, gonna have to pass on that one.” She hooks a thumb toward where she’s left her scythe leaning against the nearest wall, and adds in a stage-whisper, “She gets jealous.”

* * *

Alerys and Natasha have hit the town together before, to mutual enjoyment and reward. When they make their first joint clothes-shopping expedition, however, a terrible rift opens between them: without actually using the words, Natasha clearly feels that Alerys _has no sense of style._

Blood has been spilled for less, by both of them. Alerys seems to have a literal need to keep up with the cutting edge of fashion (even if her action-wear is trending more and more toward the utilitarian end of the spectrum); Natasha, always on the lookout for something new and original, is nonetheless a clear devotee of the classic approach, and — unquestionably and undeniably stylish — regards with a faint scorn anything that hasn’t already proven itself over at least a few decades. For each, it’s a matter of prickly principle, and there is a looming prospect of active hostilities breaking out.

Natasha skillfully diverts the entire issue by shifting the expedition into shopping for, and evaluation of, different models of knives. That works out _so_ much better; their preferences are more closely in tune there, and any differences of opinion can be argued incisively but without rancor.

Close one.

* * *

None of the others have met Stark’s oldest friend, Lt. Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes. Most have heard of him in one way or another, however, and when the course of offstage events puts him into the War Machine armor, his profile comes into higher prominence. That was during a long, bitter argument between Stark and the U.S. government, with a hard distance between the two men springing out of Rhodes’s participation in a small part of that. The freeze eventually thaws, and one evening Stark brings Rhodes (in civilian clothes) to show him the Tower’s layout and do quick, ‘casual’ introductions with the others. Nobody doubts that this is designed to explore (or prepare for) the eventuality of bringing the other man into the team.

Alerys likes him, and says so to Stark at the first opportunity.

Rhodes finds that Alerys gives him the creeps, and says so to Stark at the first opportunity.

* * *

The team softball game — another offering from the “Great Idea” Fairy — is a cataclysmic, hilarious failure, with twenty-three balls lost and seventeen destroyed (along with four bats). Even before it’s over, everyone can see that this one will be rehashed, with searing argument and reminiscent gloating, for years to come.

They’re careful, however, to avoid showing any reaction when Stark swears he’ll buy Central Park so they’ll have enough room to try it again properly. It’s probably ostentatious hyperbole (Stark engages in a lot of that), but they’re fully aware that the crazy bastard might actually _do_ it if anybody gives him anything that could serve as an excuse.

Maybe later, when there are enough of them to field a proper team …

* * *

When things decide to go to hell, they do it in _spectacular_ fashion.

Alerys isn’t around for the beginning, but then very few are: Thor back in Asgard, Stark and Banner in deep seclusion in some isolated research conference, Barton completely off the grid (maybe a covert assignment, maybe some of the family time he guards so jealously), and Alerys herself checking out some _something_ in Tibet which she refuses to talk about when she returns.

What she returns to is a mess. Fury has been reported dead, Rogers — hero to four generations — declared a renegade, Natasha is being hunted along with him, there are bizarre reports of highway shootouts and a man with a metal arm and another with _wings_ … When she forces her way into the safe-house where Maria Hill has secreted the fugitives, Fury’s first words to her are, “You don’t seem surprised to see me alive.”

She shrugs at that. “Learned a long time ago, dead doesn’t always stick.” A sigh. “Also, I had one of those dreams: they put a sheet over your face, but your heart was still beating. Call that a clue.” She looks to Sam Wilson, one eyebrow going up. “You’re new. You the guy with the wings?”

“That’s me,” he agrees, smiling. “Guy With the Wings.”

More focused on the immediately practical, Hill wants to know, “How did you find us here?”

The smile from Alerys is genuine, if somehow alarming. “Jarvis and I came to an understanding. And no, he hasn’t been able to get through to any of the others.” She makes a mouth in vexation. “Seriously, you guys need some version of the Bat-signal.”

Nobody has any idea at all what _that_ might mean (and she clearly finds something funny in their incomprehension), but then the agenda switches to working out a plan of action. Surprisingly, she — not Fury — is the one who balks when Rogers wants to put all SHIELD’s data into public access. “There’s a cost to keeping secrets,” she says. “Same for _not_ keeping secrets. It isn’t a yes-or-no, you have to decide each one as it comes up.”

And Fury shakes his head, not particularly happy at having to argue against his own agency. “I’d been ready to say the same thing, but he’s right about this one: if Hydra’s co-opted SHIELD, we have to root it out, turn over every last rock.” He looks back to Rogers. “Just so you know, it’s a temporary fix. There’ll be another organization, because we need one, and they’ll start keeping their own secrets because they have to. We’re not changing the system here, just hanging up new curtains.”

“I’ll take it,” Rogers says, and they go on from there.

It moves smoothly, at the beginning. Rogers’s infiltration of the Triskelion headquarters, aided by Hill, lets him make the PA announcement that sets the decent people in SHIELD against the cadre that’s infiltrated key points (which seem to include all three of the Insight helicarriers); Natasha and Fury take the lead to locate and immobilize Alexander Pierce, and then Rogers, Alerys, and Wilson storm the three helicarriers to replace the data blades that control targeting. All three succeed … but, separated as they are, nobody is around to witness the final face-off between Rogers and the brainwashed assassin who is somehow also his oldest and closest friend.

They’re there when he wakes up in the hospital, though. His eyes are barely open when Alerys says, “He pulled you out of the water.”

Rogers looks to Wilson, at the other side of his bed. “Thanks,” he croaks faintly.

“No, not him,” Alerys corrects him. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Sam’s turned out to be major cool … but it was your other friend, that Tin Soldier guy, who went in after you. I guess you were right about him.” She shakes her head, mutters, “Been nice if he could’ve found his inner good-guy _before_ he put however many bullets into you. But yeah, he stepped up at the end.”

Still weak, Rogers studies her instead of making immediate reply. She speaks with such certainty; did she go into the water as well, and _see_ Bucky find him and pull him out? Questions for later. “Thanks anyway,” he whispers. “To everybody.” Then it sinks in: in the minutes he’s been awake, he’s seen the strain visibly fading from Wilson’s face, but Alerys was unconcerned from the start. “You weren’t worried about me,” he realizes.

“Nope,” she agrees. “The way you were healing … I’ve seen that kind of thing before. Anything that hadn’t already killed you, wasn’t going to kill you. Just a matter of how long it would take you to bounce back.”

There’s more to it than that, though. Something is different about her now, but his brain is too tired for him to try to guess, so he just says, “And?”

And she smiles to him, with surprise and pleasure and a kind of wonder. “What you said to me,” she said. “Months ago. I heard what you said, and I thought I understood what you said … but I didn’t really know what you _meant_ by what you said, did I?”

Still tired, so, “Hmm?”

“I asked how you could deal with knowing you’d never see your home again. And you said, ‘If you ever figure that out, let me know.’ ” There’s actually a tinge of laughter in her voice, but flavored with the same wonder he’s already recognized. “I thought you meant you didn’t have the answer. But … you meant exactly what you said, didn’t you? That you wanted me to tell you, once I’d found it for myself.”

He smiles back to her, nodding. This is something he learned after his mother died, more than eighty years ago now: that he wasn’t facing his life alone. He had Bucky, and then later he had Peggy Carter, and the men in his unit. However bitter life’s wounds might be, he didn’t have to be alone.

Wilson watches, not knowing what this is about but undisturbed by that, as the other two beam at each other in shared understanding. When Rogers had said what he did to Alerys, he hadn’t yet reached the point he was describing, but he’d known that he would, and in time he did … and now, apparently, she has as well.

_How do you deal with it, when you’ve lost your home forever?_

_You find — or you make — another one._

He smiles at her. Wilson smiles at them both. Alerys looks away, suddenly a little pink with embarrassment, and says, “Oh, and just so you know: I ate your Jell-O.”

He laughs at that, even though it hurts. Wilson shakes his head: _You folks are seriously nuts._ That’s funny, too, and Alerys starts laughing as well.

It’s taken them a long time to get there, but it’s good to be home.

  
end


End file.
